It does, I wasn’t sure how it would hold up but together with its remarkable sound ambiance (which hasn’t dated a day) it still feels like a relatively modern title. It still has the old (ie. never fixed) vsync bug, which leads to sluggish mouse movement, but I fixed this by turning off vsync in the app and enabling it under nvidia control panel. I tried the controller but I find the mouse far more precise, and when faced with a jumble of limbs and claws heading in your direction then precision is exactly what I need!

Dead Space 3 had some really cool parts, some really cool ideas. Floating around in space at the beginning, exploring all those drifting space hulks in orbit over the ice planet was pretty great. Didn’t hit the highs of the first two games, but still really interesting. It’s just that once you get down to the planet, things get … boring. The weird love triangle thing with Ellie and what’s his name, your boring space marine partner, the boring space aliens who lived on the planet once upon a time … it was all just so, what’s the word? It’s on the tip of my tongue.

Oh, nothing at all! How anticlimactic. I bet the next time I go into some toilets expecting nothing I’ll find something leaping at my face!

There’s lots of great industrial machinery in Dead Space. Not sure what this cage is, but it’s broken, swinging back and forth ominously, casting scary shadows on the floor. What was once a functional piece of machinery now seems as alien as the rest of the necromorphs.

Finally, upgrades! I want everything, and I want it now! What do you mean I only have two power nodes? Hmmm. Damage and capacity increase. Yeah, that sounds reassuring. I’ve also already completely run out of inventory space, packed as it is with med packs and plasma rounds. This crappy suit is feeling restrictive already.

What do you mean, go back to the shuttle? Who put you in charge anyway? Oh, I guess the company did. Anyway, backtracking through these early areas is the kind of thing Dead Space does so well. It’s never quite the same, and you know from the skittering things in the mist that bad things are going to happen.

Oh crap. There goes my ride off this pile of junk. The only solution is to find the pilot. His body is in Medical. Ah yes, Medical. Every sci-fi horror movie has to have a Medical section. It’s where BAD THINGS happen.

Well, goodbye world. Let’s take a last look at this iconic view which I’m sure we’ll see again…

I’m at the tram station. It’s remarkably free of gore and viscera. However, it does have these scary ads. I’m not sure what (or who) Peng is, but it’s not exactly selling it. The Bonitica ad is even more depressing. Ok, back to the alien zombies.

For my money, I get a grand total of 3 additional inventory slots and… that’s it? Ok, that’s why you don’t buy shit at the tram station. At least I look more like a deep sea diver.

I take the tram and the next station is… well, a mess. There’s body bags everywhere. I suppose this is the medical deck, but it looks more like a morgue right now. But wait, what’s this! An actual, living person? Uh…

It’s not really a spoiler if I tell you she doesn’t last very long. Dies in a very dramatic fashion with limbs flailing everywhere thanks to the ragdoll system kicking in. At least she gave me the ability to do this…

I feel like a Jedi, force pushing things out of the way. I hope it comes in more useful than just moving a couple of crates.

Down this corridor, following a blood trail, it must lead to the medical section! But what’s this? More anti-science propaganda! Hey, you’d still be back on Earth relaxing by the river and watching the sunset without science, instead of being on this advanced starship surrounded by alien corpses. Wait, ok, you may have a point.

Ok, I got out of that fairly easily. Back at the workbench and it’s time to upgrade my plasma cutter! I’m going to try and do the whole thing with just the plasma cutter, which could be asking for trouble, but here goes. MOAR DAMAGE.

Speaking of the babies in vats: I love that there’s all this lore in the world of Dead Space just under the surface of you take the time to look a little deeper, read the logs, stuff like that. The CEC clones crew members and keeps the babies on hand for body parts when crew members are injured. It’s just so casually amoral, and then also explains why there are baby zombies with tentacles growing out of their backs all over the ship. It’s awesome.

Are you playing on Hard or Normal. I sooked out and went with Normal because I thought I’d be a nervous wreck, but now that I’m into it the old skillz and confidence are coming back. Still, I know that it gets harder, and I know that without any other weapons things like the spidery things will eat through your ammo (if they don’t eat through your face) and when you’re fighting those bastards off and being assailed by several other necromorphs at once then Hard might be a bit too frustrating. So yes, I’m sticking with the plasma cutter only, on Normal. That actually makes it more scary because, to be honest, some of those other weapons felt OP. But like you said, having a single beast of weapon is likely to make up for it. We’ll see. The horrors of the infirmary await…

I’m playing on normal, because I’m doing a “new game plus” from my initial play years ago, with the military suit unlocked and my powered up weapons carried forward. Which yeah, kind of trivializes the experience, but I’m thinking I’ll use it as a warmup for an Impossible run. Because I have to be honest, it kind of galls me that @Rock8man has that Epic Tier 3 Engineer achievement and I don’t.

I got attacked in here by more of those mutant babies, but they were dispatched with ease with my upgraded plasma cutter. Another attack in the corridor followed, in which one of the necromorphs tried to eat my face off the bastard, and I was so busy hitting E that I forgot to hit F12. Ah yes, hit E to not have your face chewed off. Dead Space never really went with the QTEs but this was the closest it got.

This charming lady was in the process of sawing the poor guy’s ribcage open when I disturbed them, so she naturally slit her own throat. Charming. I suck at taking screenshots though, so you’ll just have to take my word for it.

Oh shit, here we go. That bat-like thing on the left, that’s new. It attaches itself to dead bodies and turns them into very much not dead necromorphs, and one of them is heading in my direction fast. This is the point in the game where I shoot the shit and stomp on any bodies, lest they get turned into more monsters!

These dark necromorphs are tougher, it takes several shots to put them down. I tried shooting this one in the nuts, but after listening to a spooky audio log of a guy pulling his own teeth out, I don’t think it’s having the desired effect.

Heading for engineering deck now. Apparently we’re spiraling down towards the planet so I need to get the engines back online. Oh, and we’re out of fuel too. This day just keeps getting better.

I love computer displays in games, especially when they’ve gone to such effort to make them look functional. This one is informing me that we’re all going to die, complete with animated orbital decay hologram. Cool.

My next entry in the increasingly inaccurately titled “no spoliarz” thread sees me heading into the bowels of engineering, trying to get the engines refueled and the centrifuge back online. There’s no way I was going to play this bit at night, so here we are on a Saturday afternoon. It’s sunny outside. How scary could this possibly be?

Brrrrr. Ok, even the scenery is intimidating. I’ve mentioned this before, but the ship is as much a part of the horror as its slimy inhabitants. Everything about the architecture is cold and alien, recalling strange body parts and horrific creatures. It’s hard to imagine people actually living here.

The above is the first place that I legit died in the game. Four necromorphs assaulted me, including one of those really nasty ones that takes about 9 shots! The second attempt I finally managed to survive, and then I noticed the conveniently-placed explosive cannisters on the floor where they’d all been standing. D’oh.

I refuelled the engines, and headed back across the scary cable car of death. This time I’m prepared for anything. Naturally, nothing appears, other than some extremely unpleasant growling noises from far below.

Nearly back to the safety of the control room. Uh oh… wasn’t that the guy who I was posing with earlier? This can’t be good. I emptied an entire clip into these two. I’ve started picking up schematics for other weapons, but while I’ve added them to the shop I’m going to foolishly stick with my plasma cutter. It makes for exciting times.

After dodging the whirling centrifuge and getting the hell out of there. There’s a conveniently-placed save station. Oh I don’t need that, the control room is just around the cornaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh